Archive | April 2016

The Words of Magic, a story-bit of Stranded

Apr13

This is in part to requests for non-Roundtree (Seasonal Siblings) Stranded stories, part in reply to anke‘s rather old request which I could not find if I’d fulfilled or not. And because the discussion around said request involved the Language of magic TV Tropes Page…

📺

“Eye of the blind, open for me.”

Most people, Nilsa knew, didn’t need to do chanting.

“Feet of the crippled, walk forward for me.”

As a matter of fact, in all of her time working with the Strands, she’d only met one other person who did formalized ritual with their Strand-spells (and only one other person who called them spells).

“Mouth of the mute, speak your words only to me.”

She drew the final line in her chalk diagram and settled into the middle of it. She’d talked to several Workers who thought that her teaching had gone awry and that had caused her dependence on spell and ritual, and three who had heard of Strand-weavers who used rituals and chants.

“Windows gone dark, open your curtains to me.”

Which was a lovely thing, in theory. She knew there had been others like her; she knew why, more or less, she was the way she was.

“Clock of the world, show what your hours have seen!”

But until now, she hadn’t had a way to see why her teacher had crippled her Strand-weaving like this. She opened her eyes wide, as the projection began playing on the wall, thousands of Strands working together to make a video of the past.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1087614.html. You can comment here or there.

Self-Insert Week 2016

Apr11

Self-Insert Week 2016
Mary Sues and self-inserts have gotten a bad rap. What started as a fun way to interact with a fandom or genre has turned into a joke. When the hell did we start taking fandom so seriously?

So we’re doing it. We’re putting ourselves back in the stories…

When is it?

The week will be the second in May, May 8th – May 14th.

This sounds like an awesome idea. Let’s do it!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1087050.html. You can comment here or there.

Dungeon-bound, a continuation for fun (Fae Apoc)

Apr11

After Dungeons, written last year, which includes forced imprisonment.

The whimper was the hardest part.

That was… well, it was true, but it was dishonest in its truth.

It was the hardest thing for Tan to do, to make the sound as if she had broken him, to let her thing she was winning.

The hardest thing about this whole process was not letting that whimper be true.

She said it had been a month. He could guess she was close to honest about that. Meals came irregularly, but the dead-eyed man who brought them would say “breakfast” or “Lunch” or “dinner,” even though there was never more than two thin meals in a day and they were almost all the same mush. Tan had counted by the pit of hunger in his stomach, and then he’d counted by the times she visited her other prisoners.

“I suppose I’ll have to leave you in here a year,” their captor had threatened, but Tam was not worried. For one, he could last longer than a year in worse circumstances than this. For another, she did not strike him as the sort who was willing to wait that long.

No, she would come down again long before another month had passed. And then the fun would begin.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1086958.html. You can comment here or there.

Aging in Cloverleaf, a story of…well, of Cloverleaf… now available for Patreon patrons~

Apr11

Aging in Cloverleaf

Fiana was getting old, and Edgar was not…

Years after they helped to build Cloverleaf, a plumber and his wife discuss their choice.

Now available on Patreon to all patrons!

Pledge just $1 a month to gain access to all these stories; pledge $5 or more a month to prompt these tales.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1086715.html. You can comment here or there.

Nothing could possib-lie go wrong… a story beginning of Summer/Bishop/Mellie

Apr10

I got lots of prompts for the triad but I’ll call this kiarrith‘s.

Title from this Simpsons quote

“So, this is…” Bishop was usually the calm one, but today, he was nervous. He was’t exactly shifting from foot to foot or anything, but that could be because they were walking rather quickly down Main Street, which didn’t leave him room to fidget. “Well, what exactly is it?”

“Well, exactly…” Summer shot him a cheerful grin. “It’s a bunch of things. It’s a craft festival that the townies and the visiting parents love. It’s a music festival after-hours that the students – and some of the townies – like. And its…” She gestured vaguely with both hands.

Mellie picked it up. “It’s a thing for people like your family, right?”

“If you know the right places and the right people, yeah. There are Strand-workers everywhere.” Summer tapped the wooden fence three times in a triangle, and a door swung open. “Like this place.”

“Are you sure…” Bishop hesitated, his hand on the fence.

“Oh, come on,” Summer coaxed. She had her bright smile on, the one that generally made either him or Mellie go along with her plans. “They’re friendly folks, these people. Strand workers almost always are.”

“Hey, who do you kids think you are! This is a private party!”

Summer’s smile slid off her face.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1086184.html. You can comment here or there.

The Thing about Tangling… (an experimental fic of Spring/Stranded World)

Apr8

This follows Tangled, Day Job, and Tangling isn’t just a walk in the park.

“Ready to go?”

The thing about being a tangler…

“Hold on, just give me a minute…”

Is that you were touching strands all the time.

“Spring, my love, can you be organized for more than fifty seconds?”

And running your hands through other people’s lines all the time.

“If you wanted someone organized, Lance, you should have bothered someone else’s stars.”

But you couldn’t touch other people’s strands…

“I didn’t want anyone else’s stars. Here’s your left shoe.”

…without getting tangled up yourself.

“Awesome. Now, where’s my purse?”

And the thing about knots was…

“You didn’t leave it on the bus again, did you?”

…they tended to manifest in strange ways when you weren’t paying attention.

“No, no, you brought it home for me. Remember?”

…and when you were distracted, tangled up in someone else, it was easy to not pay attention.

“That’s right… here it is. What would you do without me?”

“Oh, I’d get by. But it wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”

And the thing about being a tangler was…

“Well, I do aim to please.”

…When you got tangled up, you got really tangled up.

“And that’s what I love about you. Well, part of it.”

Close with a kiss, and find yourself even further tangled.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1085749.html. You can comment here or there.

A Rude Awakening

Apr7

I found the first half of this in my e-mail. To be honest, I have no idea where I’d been intending to go with this, but this is where it ended up.

“You’re interesting.”

Whistler was not sure what he’d expected, but that was probably not it. The short girl was perched on the footboard of the bed, wearing an indigo silk bathrobe and, as far as he could tell, nothing else. And she was staring at him.

In terms of ‘ways to wake up,’ it was definitely his weirdest yet, even here in Addergoole. And yesterday he’d woken up to screams and a power outage.

“I’m…” Whistler moved to sit up and realized that he was pinned down. No… strapped. He looked to either side of him slowly – dresser, open door to the bathroom, large posters of landscapes. It was anything but institutional. He looked down at his chest. Straps. He moved a wrist. More straps. “I’m strapped down,” he finished. Just because it was a familiar feeling didn’t mean he liked it.

“Well…” She rubbed her neck, where, Whistler noticed, there were bruises in the shape of fingers. “I figured I ought to make sure you were calm before we started talking.”

Whistler swallowed. Oh, no. “Oh, god,” he whispered. “Did I…”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1085477.html. You can comment here or there.

A Stretch after Sleep, a continuation

Apr6

After After Long Sleep.

There were five men staring at her. Well, she had just stepped out of the ground.

Besides, Aster was used to staring, except that the looks they were giving her were not admiring, they were concerned. That was new. She checked herself – nope, she was still Masked, although she was naked. She’d been clothed when she was buried, she was pretty sure. But no, nothing but a few sad tatters, and the air was a bit chilly.

The man in front cleared his throat. “Ah. Did we wake you?”

“Well, some rather annoying people stuck me in the ground…” She frowned. “So I suppose it’s more as if you rescued me.”

“Buried you?” The man that spoke this time sounded urgent, worried. “When? That is, how long ago?” Aster frowned at him.

“Well, let me see.. I believe it was around seventeen-ninety…”

“Seventeen?” The first man stared at her. “Well, then you’re not one of the returned gods, at least. But then what ARE you?”

“What I am,” Aster answered, perhaps a wee bit crossly, “is hungry.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1085398.html. You can comment here or there.

Road Trip Write-Up the Beginning of a fic

Apr5

This was supposed to be a blorp of description and then, well, this happened. This happens a couple years before the current Regine-visits-Cya story.

It was a nice time of year for a travel: early autumn, and a mild one at that, not too hot and not too cold. The roads were solid and smooth from Cloverleaf all the way to what had once been Denver; the first week went quickly. Not only were the roads smooth, but they were relatively safe; Cloverleaf had a long arm, and was known not to tolerate bandits.

Past Denver, that all changed. A week’s travel was as far as Cloverleaf maintained the roads, and thus was as far as their protection was assumed to reach. The roads got bumpy – nothing a couple quick Workings couldn’t smooth out, but that took time. And the bandits got brave – nothing the sight of Leo couldn’t handle, in most cases, but that, too, took time. Sometimes they actually had to fight some thief or slaver whose ambition was greater than their sense.

Outside of what had once been Des Moines and now was a collective of small city-states around Crater Lake, they ran into a different sort of threat – bureaucracy. The toll-booth takers wanted a tithe to use the one paved, clear, safe road, and they wanted written statements of intent, and a tithe of any profits made while in the Crater Lake region. What’s more, they didn’t take Cloverleaf clovers for payment, muttering something about “fairy money.”

It wasn’t the first time they’d run into things like that, so they paid the toll in more acceptable currencies and made mental notes about the situation. They could probably conquer the Crater States, but there were easier, cleaner ways to turn people’s opinions around. If trade didn’t do it, culture might. If that didn’t, maybe education. And failing that, well, they could always send a small team of their ambassadors.

It had been a few years – decades, really – since Cya had been running Cloverleaf actively, but it was still her baby, after all.

Just outside the mess that had been Chicago, they ran into a slaver ring. That took a day off of their time, but, while Cya could tolerate the existence of slavery, there were certain types of slavers that made her skin crawl.

Besides, it didn’t hurt to leave a reminder. Cloverleaf might be nearly two weeks’ travel away, but they would interfere where they wanted to, when people were doing awful things.

The Find Cya had done was sending them quite far afield indeed. They traveled through the night to get around once-Chicago, then settled for a day in a quiet little patch of forest to rest. Then it was on to Detroit.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1085173.html. You can comment here or there.